DANCER'S TRAGIC END.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19743, 16 September 1927, Page 11

DANCER'S TRAGIC END.

motor-car accident. AN EXTRAORDINARY CAREER. A. and N.Z.-Sun. LONDON. Sept. 14. The famous American dancer, Madame Isadora Duncan, met with a tragic end at Nice. She was driving a motor-car along the Promenade des Anglais when a long scarf she was wearing caught in a wheel and dragged her from her seat into the road. When she was picked up it was found her spinal column was fractured. She was conveyed to a hospital, where she died. Madame Isadora Duncan was born at San Francisco in May, 187S, and educated there, receiving special training in dancing. In IS9O she made her first appearance as a dancer, fehe went to Chicago in 1895 and later joined Augustin Daly s company in New \ork ( taking dancing roles. When she performed in London in 1899 she was enthusiastically received and she made a tour of the principal capitals and art centres of Europe. She made a specialty of classical dancing, as an exponent of which she had a considerable vogue. Madame Duncan had a most interesting career, which was by no means ficc from tragedy. In 1908 she bought a villa at Neuilly built by the painter Gervex and she gave brilliant parties there till one tragic day in 1913. Madame's children and their nurse left for a drive in a motor-car, which, as the result of an accident, plunged into the Seine, all the occupants being drowned. When the Russian revolution broke out Madame became for the time being a sympathiser with the Bolsheviks and at the invitation of the Soviet Government went to Moscow, where she started a big school of dancing and married the eccentric Russian poet Serge Yessenin, although neither could speak the other's language. He was very violent in his cups and ill-treated her. Disillusioned as regards Bolshevism, she returned to Paris and eventually divorced her husband, who committed suicide at Petrograd in December, 1925, leaving his last- poem written in blood. In November. 1926, Madame's house at Neuilly was sold to liquidate her debts. She had declared that she was penniless, but refused property valued at 300.000 francs left her by Yessenin and awarded to her by the Soviet. A number of friends began to raise money to bay back the house, the sculptor Bourdelle sending her a model of his famous " Bacchante," which, he said, should realise 30.000 francs. Meanwhilo they arranged for her to spend the winter on the Riviera. She and her young accompanist inaugurated a large studio at Nice, where she gave performances. _ All vMent well till an American girl arrived on the scene and took the fancy of the accompanist. One evening in January, 1927, Isadora gave a dinner, at which the wine circulated freely. Toward the end of the feast the accompanist, it, is said, paid marked attention to the fair American, with the result that the dancer, clad in her classical robes, walked down to the sea —Tanagra under the moon. She did not stop at the edge of the water, hut waded in till it reached her shoulders. She was taken from the sea by an invalid English officer. Then, while lying on her Greek couch with incense smoking on the tripods around her she remarked fo her friends: "Ah well, it is written t that I shall have still more adventures." Madame in fact did have many adventures, From the early days when she starved in London, studying the Elgin Marbles in the British Mnsenm, living on penny buns and pawning her grandmother's" jewels She narrowly escaped death by fires and road accidents. Her eccentricities were notorious. Once, on visiting the Parthenon at Athens, she began to dance, to the delight of tourists and the confusion of the gendarmes, whom she informed that this was how she worshipped at the shrine of the Acropolis. In 1924 she announced that she contemplated publishing 1000 of her love-letters, saying that she would "show the writers np."